Pyotr Suvchinsky

Pyotr Petrovich Suvchinsky, later known as Pierre Souvtchinsky, born 1892, died 1984, was a Ukrainian artistic patron and writer on music. The heir to a sugar fortune, he took piano lessons from Felix Blumenthal and initially hoped to become an operatic tenor. He was the patron and co-publisher of the Saint Petersburg musical journal "Muzikalniy sovremennik" founded in 1915. He was a friend of Nikolai Myaskovsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and was the real author of the book "La poétique musicale", published as by Stravinsky. He emigrated from Russia in 1922 and lived in Berlin and Sofia, where he founded the Russian-Bulgarian Publishing House; then in Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was still active in musical circles and a champion of the music of Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez in the post-war period; he was a co-founder, with Boulez and Jean-Louis Barrault, of the Domaine musical concert series.

References

Richard Taruskin, "Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions" (Oxford University Press, 1996), especially pp. 1120-1134.